The Women of the East

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, Issue 213, 23 August 1927, Page 8

The Women of the East

BHE human race cannot move forward if its womanhood lags behind. Woman has carved for herself a new place In the world.

The British "Miss 1927” Is in many ways different from “Miss 1890,” and even from “Miss 1910”; but in many other respects she is the same. Even where she differs from her predecessors, it is seldom to her disadvantage. She is more self-reliant than they, and better able to take care of herself.

It is in the countries of the Orient that the greatest advance toward emancipation is to be seen. Old customs die hard, particularly in the Hast; but "purdah” is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, and the Chinese lady of to-day has been emancipated from the tiny shoe that pinched her mother’s foot and must have made her life almost unendurable.

There is a long way to go, however, before woman comes into her own, even in some of the most enlightened countries ot the East. In Japan, among the well-to-do, marriages are still usually arranged by the parents In India, widowhood has for long been regarded more or less as a disgrace. The widow always wears a distinctive dress of sombre white, and is forbidden by her religion to remarry. The position of the child widow is one of the tragedies of India. From the latest figures I have seen, there are 20,000 little girl widows under the age of five, and a million under the age of 10 (writes Sir Arthur Yapp in "The World To-day”). There are said to be no fewer than 47 million .vidows altogether iff India, all of whom are condemned to widowhood for .life, mpnv nf thnrn Fr» o lifn <-»f •»•»<!

shame. But womanhood in India is moving forward, and I am convinced will soon put an end to this great reproach The women ot the Orient have not been slow to avail thegiselves of the

opportunities afforded by education, and many of them are brilliantly clever. One of our young Indian Y.M.C.A. secretaries came over during the Great War to serve in the association centres tor the Indian troops in France. During the two years he was away, his wife, in addition to the care of her home and two small children, sutdied at the Madras University and qualified as a doctor. Coming to England last year whilst he was in the United States, she took the M.R.C.S. and L.R.C.P. degrees at London University. Not only in India, but equally in China and Japan, the girls of the present generation realise the importance of education and are crowding into the schools and colleges that have opened their doors to them.

There was a tendency at one time for the women of the East to Imitate their sisters of the West in the matter of dress, and some do so still. I was glad, however, to observe the contrary tendency, and I believe it is all to the good. Nothing could be more beautiful than the many-coloured saris that adorn the graceful figures of the ladles of India. No one, again, can fail to admire the costume of a Japanese lady, with the picturesque and characteristic obi, or sash, that is only seen in that country. A woman’s figure is the most beautiful thing the Creator has made. As far as our own country is concerned, the fashions of bygone days seemed to aim at disguising or exaggerating that figure; modern fashions at their best seem to strike the happy medium —though it must be confessed they sometimes go too far in a return to the simplicity of the Garden of Eden. The ladles of Japan have very long hair, and have it made up carefully and elaborately dressed and I —Uh — nnrtprfnl "’-nnmonts

1 1 am told that on their sleeping mats ] they have special block bolsters that I fit into the back of the neck sr Mt their hair is not interfered with ' In almost, every country 1 ..... i visited, one sees the women working

on the land. In British Malaya, Tam. girls do a great deal of work on th< rubber plantations, such as tapping th< trees for the precious lactic fluid—thighly skilled operation. At Nagasaki, the great Japanes< naval port, I was very much impressed in watching the women taking their part in coaling the ship—very heavy work for a woman. At Hong Kong, 60,000 people live in houseboats or sampans, and many are very poor. When the P. and O. liner on which 1 was travelling was lying at the landing stage at Kowloon, I watched with interest the women in one of these sampans that floated close to us. They held long poles with a net at the end of each. Any offal, fishbones, or waste food thrown overboard from our galleys was Instantly caught up by these human scavengers and salved for food.

The great game for women in the Far East is tennis. Mah Jong and playing cards also have their place in woman’s life in China. The well-to-do can be seen in the cool of the evening in sumptuous motor-cars, most of them manufactured In the United States. As education advances, women are turning more and more to litera ture or music or sport. I was interested to find that no women take up theatrical life as a profession in China or Japan, female parts always being taken by males who have been trained from infancy to that end. At Hangchow, one of the old-world cities of China, I visited the Temple of the Goddess of Mercy. The Goddess was represented by a huge figure in brass, with a thousand hands held out symbolically to help human needs. The ancients had thus symbolised their ideal of the prerogative of womanhood. How powerless that figure really was to give help to anyone! A few doors away, I visited one of the wonderful Missionary Hospitals, and saw many hands held out and actually helping to meet the urgent needs of suffering humanity. In that hospital, Chinese women were doing splendid work as nurses. In the same city, I saw the Temple of the God of War, Ya Se, one of the heroes of modern youth in China. He had been fighting against the Mongols in the north, and on returning home was raised to a position of high authority in the State. His enemies plotted against him, and, after a mock trial, he was condemned and sentenced to death. His clothes were torn off, and there were revealed, branded on his back, the words, “Tsong Tzln Tao Koh”—“With Fidelity Protect Country.” The words had been branded by his mother before he started off for ■the war. The populace instantly demanded his release; they felt that a man with such a mother was not likely to be a traitor to the country.

The trend of the world’s woman hood as a whole is, I believe, forward and upward. The modern girl does not always wear herself on her sleeve. In all material ways, she compares not unfavourably with her grand mother when she was a girl. No one had more reason than I to appreciate the value of woman’s work in the Great War. It the need and the opportunity should arise again, it will find her equally ready to give up her cards and dancing, her bridge, and her ’“unis parties, and, roughing it with men, to-settle down to the real ousiuess of life. _